Newbie could use some help, bar soap consistency

[vegoilrecycler]

Hello.

Thanks to all who contribute here.

I am having newbie issues with my lye soap. It's got a solid consistency on the bottom and a foamy/spongy consistency on top. I'd like the soap to have the solid consistency throughout. It looks better and feels much more solid. I think heat control during the pouring or just after pouring into the mold allowed air bubbles to not escape and set into the top half of the slab.

I'm not what would be considered a traditional soaper. I produce biodiesel from soft oils and have loads of rich glycerin left over. It's dark brown in color like a Guiness Stout beer. That's where the color in the soap is coming from. The soap itself is mainly from Steric Acid. There's a little bit of Coconut oil and olive oil added in for their beneficial properties. All of it is fully saponified with NaOH lye and the "hot process method." Hopefully that explains why my soap doesn't look like your soap (brown color) and I know there's issues which are already present because of the non-traditional ingredients.

My hope is that you could take a look at the pic of my bar and tell me if you've seen this problem AND if you've overcome it with some modifications to your process or mold or something else.

The bar in the pic above was poured into a wooden mold. The mold is 3-1/2" deep X 2-3/8" wide X 24" long.

More details leading up to the pouring:
I added in enough lye to keep the soap hot after 1 hour of cooking at 160F. I was using a double-boiler to keep from scalding the material. After making sure the entire mixture was fully saponified, I then added in the olive oil and coconut oil in increments (cooking for 20 minutes after each 2 oz addition) until it wasn't hot anymore. I'm fairly certain that the mixture is less than 5% superfatted.

I let the soap cool down a bit before scenting. I poured the soap at a temp which was probably in the neighborhood of 130F. Maybe too cool? After pouring the soap into the wood mold, I put towels around it to keep it insulated. This was suggested to me by a traditional soaper that I met at a flea market over the weekend. Within 45 minutes, the soap began to sag on the top. You can see the evidence of this in the cut bar which is a cross-section of the slab. It's got a concave top edge.

The soap is scented with Mint Rosemary. It lathers nicely, conditions nicely, and smells great! I just want it to look great.

Thanks for reading my huge post and I look forward to any helpful suggestions.

 

[beachgurl]

Can't help you here .. not even remotely going to pretend to know .. but I know donnierj makes soap from his bio glycerine, maybe you could try PM'ing him or getting in contact with him .. I know his soap is consistent as I've seen pics

 

[vegoilrecycler]

Have any of the traditional soapers run into this issue when they were starting out?

Thanks a million.

 

[carebear]

nope

I cannot even begin to figure it out unless I know how much actual unsaponified fatty acid acids there were, and which ones - because I don't know how much lye you needed or used....

the whole thing is quite confusing to me. I assume you didn't just use just stearic acid and coconut since you said you used biodiesel which has some unsaponified fatty acid in what you folks term "glycerin". and I read you saying you HP'd it - but if you do that all the reaction happens in the pot and the mold is simply for the soap to solidify - no rising or falling there, and no need to insulate.

To figure this out, I think you need to first understand what soap is and how it's made... try millersoap.com.

 

[mandolyn]

Making soap from biodiesel by-product is not the same as the soaping most of us do here.

Was the biodiesel produced with potassium hydroxide or sodium hydroxide & which did you use to make the soap?

From what I've read, you have to soap with the form the biodiesel was produced with. If it was potassium hydroxide, you'll never have solid (hard) soap.

There seems to be a lot of confusion among biodiesel soapers, because
a. you don't know the basics of regular cold processed soapmaking
b. you don't know what SAP values you're working with (that's how we calculate how much lye to use)

Have you tried searching the internet to locate forums that are specific to biodiesel soapmaking? You'd probably get more help there than we can offer here - wish I could be of more help, but...

 

[knicelyr]

Yes the main issue for the biodiesel community is that they do not have a full understanding of making soap. Many do not mix the ingredients well enough either...

I know that vegoilrecycler
does know the basics and I think he has an excess of lye. I was working with him on this the night it happened. It was also a rebatch.

But...

Part of the issue for them is in how to fully saponify the glycerin byproduct they get when making biodiesel. There are saponifiable elements in the glycerin which need to be saponified. There is an amount of lye that needs to be added. I've worked out a mechanical way to get a SAP number from the glycerin byproduct. After that you can add anything you like provided you use the SAP number for the ingredients you are adding.

So far what I can tell when getting foam that will not work back into the soap it is usually because of and excess of lye. In some cases it also seems to happen with an extreme deficiency in lye too, but it looks a bit different. One other thing that sometimes happens if the foam is pH balanced is that a lot of air got mixed in.

Because of this lack of knowledge I am in the process of writing a book specifically related to how to use the biodiesel byproducts. I hope to have these types of issues resolved.


Question... If a soap is aerated such as floating soap. If it is rebatched will it loose the aeration and participate as regular soap again?

 

[mandolyn]

Because of this lack of knowledge I am in the process of writing a book specifically related to how to use the biodiesel byproducts. I hope to have these types of issues resolved.

You might be recreating the wheel. There's already a book or booklet (don't know which) available. Would that be of any help? Here's the link:
http://www.utahbiodieselsupply.com/soapguide.php

 

[knicelyr]

To address the foam issue that vegoilrecycler brought up I played with my last batch of bar soap. Here is what I found.

There seem to be 2 flavors of foam, and maybe a third. The first two act and look very similar in that they both float and will not mix back into the soap broth.

The first is like little tiny bubbles that accumulate. This seems to be when there is an excess of lye and can be corrected by adding an oil based fatty acid or liquid oil such as olive oil. The solid fatty acids work, but not as quickly.

The second is more of a floating marshmallow cream. It's more puffy in nature and seems to indicate an excess in fats/oils/fatty acids. You can also think of this as being lye deficient. It can be corrected by adding lye water mixed 1:1.

With both of these types of foam you should correct it slowly with very small amounts. I suggest .5oz oil/fatty acid and .25oz lye. After each addition mix well and cook for an additional 15 minutes. Do this until the pH is corrected and the symptoms clear up.

It is a bit difficult to tell which of these two you have. Doing a pH test is the best way to see. 8 or below has a deficiency of lye and 10 and above has an excess of lye.

The third type of foam has a pH between the 8.5 and 9.5 that you would expect. It seems to occur when the soap is at a boil making tiny aerated bubbles. This can be kept under control by the alcohol mist that freesoul came up with. Be very careful if you are using an open flame to make your soap.

Adding a bit more water will help in correcting all of these but more water means you will have to evaporate it or the soap will take longer to firm up. My soaps are firm anywhere from 1 hour to 6 hours if I add alcohol for added transparency.


Dose anyone here in the "real" soap world experience any type of foam when hot processing?

If so for similar reasons?

 

[knicelyr]

I have another theory and it proved to be the case with last nights batch.

An excess of water will make the solution thin enough as to allow the lighter soaps to separate from the soap and float to the top. This top layer floats on water and will not change if rebatched. If you add more oils and lye you can get it to mix.

I tried a reduction in water and hot processed until neutral and those soaps stayed in solution. When I added enough water to loosen things I got that separation.

Salt might have a role to play too... I'm going to test that out. One way to separate the soaps from the glycerin is using a salt brine. This stuff being ultimately from restaurant grease may have inherently more salt. I am going to experiment with that too.

Does any of this happen in traditional soaping?

 

[knicelyr]

nudge nudge...

 

[beachgurl]

uuuuuh .. i don't think so .. at most you'll get separation of the soap batter because of inadequate mixing or using a bad FO .. false trace can cause it sometimes as well ... i've never had soap that even slighly displayed the problems that you are having ... sorry

 

[carebear]

me neither.